The Astronomy of the Bible, E. Walter Maunder [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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In this we get the institution of the week, the first ordinance imposed by God upon man. For in the fourth of the ten commandments which God gave through Moses, it is said—
"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
And again, when the tabernacle was being builded, it was commanded—
"The children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed."
God made the sun, moon, and stars, and appointed them "for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." The sun marks out the days; the moon by her changes makes the months; the sun and the stars mark out the seasons and the years. These were divisions of time which man would naturally adopt. But there is not an exact number of days in the month, nor an exact number of days or months in the year. Still less does the period of seven days fit precisely into month or season or year; the week is marked out by no phase of the moon, by no fixed relation between the sun, the moon, or the stars. It is not a division of time that man would naturally adopt for himself; it runs across all the natural divisions of time.
What are the six days of creative work, and the seventh day—the Sabbath—of creative rest? They are not days of man, they are days of God; and our days of work and rest, our week with its Sabbath, can only be the figure and shadow of that week of God; something by which we may gain some faint apprehension of its realities, not that by which we can comprehend and measure it.
Our week, therefore, is God's own direct appointment to us; and His revelation that He fulfilled the work of creation in six acts or stages, dignifies and exalts the toil of the labouring man, with his six days of effort and one of rest, into an emblem of the creative work of God.
FOOTNOTES:[15:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, Theory of Observations, p. 1.
[16:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, Theory of Observations, p. 1.
MERODACH AND TIAMAT.
Sculpture from the Palace of Assur-nazir-pel, King of Assyria. Now in the British Museum.
Damaged by fire. Supposed to represent the defeat of Tiamat by Merodach.ToList
[To face p. 25.
CHAPTER III THE DEEPThe second verse of Genesis states, "And the earth was without form and void [i. e. waste and empty] and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The word tehōm, here translated deep, has been used to support the theory that the Hebrews derived their Creation story from one which, when exiles in Babylon, they heard from their conquerors. If this theory were substantiated, it would have such an important bearing upon the subject of the attitude of the inspired writers towards the objects of nature, that a little space must be spared for its examination.
The purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is to tell us that—
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
From it we learn that the universe and all the parts that make it up—all the different forms of energy, all the different forms of matter—are neither deities themselves, nor their embodiments and expressions, nor the work of conflicting deities. From it we learn that the universe is not self-existent, nor even (as the pantheist thinks of it) the expression of one vague, impersonal and unconscious, but all-pervading influence. It was not self-made; it did not exist from all eternity. It is not God, for God made it.
But the problem of its origin has exercised the minds of many nations beside the Hebrews, and an especial interest attaches to the solution arrived at by those nations who were near neighbours of the Hebrews and came of the same great Semitic stock.
From the nature of the case, accounts of the origin of the world cannot proceed from experience, or be the result of scientific experiment. They cannot form items of history, or arise from tradition. There are only two possible sources for them; one, Divine revelation; the other, the invention of men.
The account current amongst the Babylonians has been preserved to us by the Syrian writer Damascius, who gives it as follows:—
"But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass over in silence the one principle of the Universe, and they constitute two, Tavthê and Apasôn, making Apasôn the husband of Tavthê, and denominating her "the mother of the gods." And from these proceeds an only-begotten son, Mumis, which, I conceive, is no other than the intelligible world proceeding from the two principles. From them also another progeny is derived, Lakhê and Lakhos; and again a third, Kissarê and Assôros, from which last three others proceed, Anos and Illinos and Aos. And of Aos and Dakhê is born a son called Bêlos, who, they say, is the fabricator of the world."[26:1]
The actual story, thus summarized by Damascius, was discovered by Mr. George Smith, in the form of a long epic poem, on a series of tablets, brought from the royal library of Kouyunjik, or Nineveh, and he published them in 1875, in his book on The Chaldean Account of Genesis. None of the tablets were perfect; and of some only very small portions remain. But portions of other copies of the poem have been discovered in other localities, and it has been found possible to piece together satisfactorily a considerable section, so that a fair idea of the general scope of the poem has been given to us.
It opens with the introduction of a being, Tiamtu—the Tavthê of the account of Damascius,—who is regarded as the primeval mother of all things.
Beneath the earth bore not a name:
The primeval ocean was their producer;
Mummu Tiamtu was she who begot the whole of them.
Their waters in one united themselves, and
The plains were not outlined, marshes were not to be seen.
When none of the gods had come forth,
They bore no name, the fates (had not been determined)
There were produced the gods (all of them)."[27:1]
The genealogy of the gods follows, and after a gap in the story, Tiamat, or Tiamtu, is represented as preparing for battle, "She who created everything . . . produced giant serpents." She chose one of the gods, Kingu, to be her husband and the general of her forces, and delivered to him the tablets of fate.
The second tablet shows the god Anšar, angered at the threatening attitude of Tiamat, and sending his son Anu to speak soothingly to her and calm her rage. But first Anu and then another god turned back baffled, and finally Merodach, the son of Ea, was asked to become the champion of the gods. Merodach gladly consented, but made good terms for himself. The gods were to assist him in every possible way by entrusting all their powers to him, and were to acknowledge him as first and chief of all. The gods in their extremity were nothing loth. They feasted Merodach and, when swollen with wine, endued him with all magical powers, and hailed him—
(Over) the whole universe have we given thee the kingdom."[28:1]
At first the sight of his terrible enemy caused even Merodach to falter, but plucking up courage he advanced to meet her, caught her in his net, and, forcing an evil wind into her open mouth—
The violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and
her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted.
He swung the club, he shattered her stomach;
he cut out her entrails; he over-mastered (her) heart;
he bound her and ended her life.
He threw down her corpse; he stood upon it."[28:2]
The battle over and the enemy slain, Merodach considered how to dispose of the corpse.
And he stripped her of her skin like a fish, according to his plan."[28:3]
Of one half of the corpse of Tiamat he formed the earth, and of the other half, the heavens. He then proceded to furnish the heavens and the earth with their respective equipments; the details of this work occupying apparently the fifth, sixth, and seventh tablets of the series.
Under ordinary circumstances such a legend as the foregoing would not have attracted much attention. It is as barbarous and unintelligent as any myth of Zulu or Fijian. Strictly speaking, it is not a Creation myth at all. Tiamat and her serpent-brood and the gods are all existent before Merodach commences his work, and all that the god effects is a reconstruction of the world. The method of this reconstruction possesses no features superior to those of the Creation myths of other barbarous nations. Our own Scandinavian ancestors had a similar one, the setting of which was certainly not inferior to the grotesque battle of Merodach with Tiamat. The prose Edda tells us that the first man, Bur, was the father of Bör, who was in turn the father of Odin and his two brothers Vili and Ve. These sons of Bör slew Ymir, the old frost giant.
"They dragged the body of Ymir into the middle of Ginnungagap, and of it formed the earth. From Ymir's blood they made the sea and waters; from his flesh, the land; from his bones, the mountains; and his teeth and jaws, together with some bits of broken bones, served them to make the stones and pebbles."
It will be seen that there is a remarkable likeness between the Babylonian and Scandinavian myths in the central and essential feature of each, viz. the way in which the world is supposed to have been built up by the gods from the fragments of the anatomy of a huge primæval monster. Yet it is not urged that there is any direct genetic connection between the two; that the Babylonians either taught their legend to the Scandinavians or learnt it from them.
Under ordinary circumstances it would hardly have occurred to any one to try to derive the monotheistic narrative of Gen. i. from either of these pagan myths, crowded as they are with uncouth and barbarous details. But it happened that Mr. George Smith, who brought to light the Assyrian Creation tablets, brought also to light a Babylonian account of the Flood, which had a large number of features in common with the narrative of Gen. vi.-ix. The actual resemblance between the two Deluge narratives has caused a resemblance to be imagined between the two Creation narratives. It has been well brought out in some of the later comments of Assyriologists that, so far from there being any resemblance in the Babylonian legend to the narrative in Genesis, the two accounts differ in toto. Mr. T. G.
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